The Works of John Newton, vol. 6

Overview

The final volume of Newton’s Works includes 236 letters and writings from Newton to his fellow preachers, to members of his congregation and community, and to unnamed individuals dealing with personal matters and in need of spiritual counsel. This collection also contains memoirs, commentary on social topics, political reflections, and Newton’s own thoughts on the slave trade. The volume concludes with an index to the entire six-volume set of Newton’s works.

Key Features

Praise for the Print Edition

In few writers are Christian doctrine, experience, and practice more happily balanced than in the author of these letters, and few write with more simplicity, piety, and force.

—Charles Spurgeon

Grace, like water, always flows downward, to the lowest place. I know no one who embodies this principle better than John Newton . . .

—Philip Yancey, author, Grace Notes

I keep John Newton on my selectest shelf of spiritual books . . .

—Alexander Whyte, Professor of New Testament, New College, 1909

He moved in the lowest and vilest circles and sank to the depths of vice, and yet there emerges from this stormy story a man who not only commands the affection of any humane soul, but who showed himself then and afterwards capable of the highest Christian graces.

—Erik Routley, pastor and hymn writer

Product Details

Title: The Works of John Newton, vol. 6

Author: John Newton

Publisher: Hamilton, Adams & Co.

Publication Date: 1820

Pages: 648

About John Newton

John Newton was born on July 24, 1725, and attended a boarding school in Stratford in Essex, during his childhood years. In 1736, Newton joined the merchant marine, and in March 1744, he set out on the HMS Harwich. His attempted desertion from the royal navy in 1745 led to a severe punishment. Newton was stripped of his rank, and transferred to a slave trading ship in 1748. In 1748, Newton was nearly shipwrecked. The storm initiated a crisis of faith in Newton’s life, and marked the first point of Newton’s conversion. He continued in the slave trade, however, until 1754.

In 1755, Newton returned to England permanently, and began studying the Bible and learning the ancient languages. He became a lay preacher, and was eventually ordained in the Church of England in 1764. He served for many years at the church in Olney in Buckinghamshire, where he became a well-known and much-respected preacher. In 1779, Newton became the rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, and in the 1780s and 1790s, a prominent leader in the evangelical movement in England. He was also influential in the lives of William Wilberforce and other leaders of the abolitionist movement. Newton died in 1807.